


What If Birds Aren't Singing, They're Screaming?

by th_esaurus



Category: Rocketman (2019)
Genre: Domestic Violence, Drug Use, M/M, Self-Destruction, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-05-27
Packaged: 2020-03-20 09:09:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18989614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/th_esaurus/pseuds/th_esaurus
Summary: He is spectacularly good at making music and spectacularly good at making mistakes.





	What If Birds Aren't Singing, They're Screaming?

**Author's Note:**

> i did not want to be the first person to write rocketman fic and yet here we are. thank you to all the usual suspects for enabling.
> 
> PLEASE let me make myself crystal clear: this is rocketman fanfiction, not RPF, and is based solely on the depictions and events from that movie.

His jaw hurts.

The Santa Barbara sun is viciously bright, far more brutal than the cough of daylight eking out from behind the London smokestacks or even LA’s hazed, dozy sunshine, low and hot but always mellowed out. Santa Barbara is coastal and blazing, and Elton’s sunglasses are strictly decorative. He squints, constantly, and that just tightens his skin and makes his jaw hurt more.

His jaw hurts because John caught him with a backhand while he was trying to pack. He’s getting better at dodging but clearly not good enough; John’s signet ring left a raw scab of torn skin an inch or two under his right ear.

He hates California. Outside of the cities it’s all wide, open vistas, shadowless coastline, miles and mountains between him and the nearest bar. Bernie has visions of retiring out here as a ranch hand in the unfathomable decades hence, a horse trainer; stables, wife, kids. Elton just supposes he’ll end up back in Pinner, or dead. Not much of a difference between the two.

The first thing Bernie did when he bought the ranch was give Elton a key. They never even called it a spare. He has his own set for Elton’s digs as well; sometimes Elton will find Bernie in the breakfast room, eating his sloppy eggs, and pointedly not commenting on the noise from his and John’s wing of the house last night. Fighting or fucking, they’re usually loud.

“I like making you cry,” John had said to him recently, very casual. “I believe it keeps you humble.”

His eyes are watering in the sun. The key is somewhere in his second suitcase and he fucking overpacked and his eyes are watering and his jaw hurts.

“ _Fuck,_ ” Elton hisses.

This is a mistake.

*

He is spectacularly good at making music and spectacularly good at making mistakes.

*

Bernie was burnt out. _Bernie_ was burnt out, he said, needed a good kip and a hearty meal and a month or two off the road. “Come out to the ranch with me,” he said.

What a fucking poet.

When he plays back the scene in his head, what Elton imagines happened is that he swallowed a bitter laugh and told Bernie sure, sure, sounded like the perfect plan, a rest, a recoup, while Elton carried the rest of the tour on his shoulders.

Sometimes his mouth runs even faster than his temper.

“That sounds like the fucking dream,” is what he’d actually said. All of a sudden overwhelmed with fatigue. “But—”

“No,” Bernie had grinned, “no buts, you’ve agreed, the deal’s done. I’ll sort things out with—”

He had a recent habit of letting John’s name hang in the air.

*

John and Bernie had had a—verbal altercation, a few weeks back. It might have been months; time is tricksy and floating these days. Neither of them have ever been particularly thunderous - it only seems to be Elton who cajoles John into raising his voice and his hand - but he remembers the crackling tension, a western stand-off in a cluttered backstage corridor.

“He’s a big boy, he can make his own decisions,” John had said pleasantly.

“So let him make them,” Bernie had spit back, quiet.

John just smiled. He always smiled, right up until his patience ran out. “You know, I never liked you, Bernie.”

*

The feeling, Elton knows, is quite mutual. But Bernie, by design or choice, has very little say in the matter.

*

“What d’you bring so many suitcases for, mate?” Bernie says, helping him in with his bags. There’s laughter in his voice, already settled out here for a week before Elton’s arrival, and it shows: tanned across the bridge of his nose, espadrilles on his dusty feet, a weightless grin. “You can dress up for the horses but I doubt they’ll appreciate it much.”

“Fuck off,” Elton gripes. “I don’t know how to dress like a normal person anymore.”

“I don’t know that you ever did,” Bernie agrees, and goddamn him, but it makes Elton laugh.

Nobody has made fun of him in years. Nobody has dared.

The ranch has the exact same flavour as Bernie’s boyish cowboy dreams: rustic in a movie-set way, full of creature comforts, with the hard Old West life only visible in kitschy paintings and leather horse collars hanging, decorative, from the wooden walls. An upright piano sits unbothered in the study, next to Bernie’s shelves and shelves of notebooks. There’s a huge humidor on the sideboard, stuffed to the brim with Cuban cigars, and an original Thomas Moran framed in the study - gifts, freely flung at Bernie from cultured fans, which, despite his claims of humility, he never once entertained the idea of refusing.

Elton has a fucking walk-in wardrobe full of shoes and jewellery he’s accrued over the past half decade, generously donated in exchange for private boxes at his shows or one-on-one dinners with fat cats whose names he couldn’t remember. He had once accused John of pimping him out to the highest bidder, and John had merely shrugged.

He’s shaken out of his head by Bernie’s thumb, poking the exact middle of his temple, above his glasses, where the crease of his brow cuts deepest.

“Don’t overthink this,” Bernie says gently. “Let’s just—take a break from the world, alright?”

Elton bats him away. “Get me a coffee,” he grumbles.

“Aye sir, yes sir,” Bernie teases, and pads to the kitchen, as relaxed as when Elton first met him. “One sugar and cream, your majesty?”

“Black. I’ve got—” He kicks over a suitcase and fishes at the bottom of it for the bottle of whiskey, wrapped for safety in his corduroy dungarees. Holds it out to Bernie, red-cheeked.

There’s no argument.

He and Bernie never argue, after all.

*

It takes days for Elton to wind down. He’s been on tour for so long that his fingers itch every night, by habit, expecting to tinkle the ivories and sing himself hoarse. But Bernie’s in no hurry to delve into the work part of their working holiday; he’s content to spend the days languidly, rising long after the sun, humming off-key Johnny Cash under his breath as he wanders through the always-open doors of the ranch, admiring the unchanging view from the porch. If the phone rings, he lets it ring. He’ll slop out the horses every morning - just two, for now, a mare and filly he has a hired hand come in and dote over while he’s touring - and every morning asks Elton to help.

The smell is atrocious, and Elton is happy to shovel his own shit, thank you very much.

“Suit yourself,” Bernie laughs.

The ranch isn’t so vast that he can’t hear Bernie take a long shower afterwards. The wet slap of his naked feet on the tile.

Not that Elton is _listening_. He can just _hear_.

Bernie insists on digging out a fire pit and grilling them great slabs of beef every night: tins of beans, potatoes and corn cobs wrapped in aluminium foil and licked by the fire until they’re almost black, slathered in butter and eaten with their bare hands, both making idiotic yelping noises over the heat on their fingertips and tongues.

“Sheriff Bernie,” Elton jibes, rolling his eyes.

“I always said it,” Bernie retorts happily.

*

He had brought a generously-filled snuff box out with him, of course, and finds Bernie’s hearty meals tend to crank his high down to a dismal buzz. The hit is better on an empty stomach. He usually has time while Bernie’s tamping down the bonfire to crouch beside the toilet for a moment, fingers on the back of his tongue; rinse out his mouth, do a line or two.

All smiles for Bernie as they while away the warm evenings.

*

It used to be—

Well, it used to be that Bernie was an escape.

They lived in each other’s pockets for a while, in Pinner. His mother’s house was never large even when he was a boy, and with two grown lads under her roof, ten bob a week but for all appearances unemployed, it seemed to become standing room only. Elton felt like he was constantly dodging her sharp elbows, his Nan’s sweet kisses on the cheek and forehead, Fred’s well-meaning slaps on the back or tousles of his thinning hair. His childhood bedroom was the only spare space - “I’d been thinking of getting in a lodger,” his mother had said airily, “but I suppose you’ll do.” - and Bernie was relegated to a roll-out mattress squeezed down next to Elton’s slim bed.

They felt like two boys at camp, in that dark little room. Writing songs by torch light, the air warm from their shared breath and whispers. Elton would tap out a four four beat on the back of Bernie’s palm, excitedly humming a riff he’d hit on, waiting for Bernie to catch the thread of it and nod along, grinning, to the bare bones beat.

They’d fall asleep with notebooks strewn in their laps, curled around each other on the floor, feet and knees and thighs all hanging over the edge of the pitiful mattress.

Elton could’ve lived in that room all spring. He wished he could drag the piano upstairs, magic up some space for it, install a pulley system from the bedroom window to crank up twice-daily helpings of sour coffee and toast.

They’d share bathwater to save his mother’s water bill. Bernie first, and then Elton in the lukewarm dregs. He never once complained. He used to dunk his face, eyes screwed shut, in the cloudy bathwater.

It was so easy, back then, to live with Bernie and not feel the strain of—

Bernie not loving him.

*

Not loving him _like that_. As had been made pointedly clear.

*

It _used to be_ —

But now, after years waking up with John in his bed, kisses good morning on the pleasant days and demands for Elton to suck his dick on the less pleasant ones—

It seems very hard after all to be constantly reminded.

*

“Not exactly writing many songs, are we, Bern? Out here on this songwriting retreat?”

They’ve been poking at the embers of the bonfire since dusk. Bernie in his cowboy boots and boxers, his chest a healthy California hue now; Elton still sickly pale, wrapped in a dressing gown he’d snatched from home. They’re drinking moonshine from a neighbourhood home brewer, and Bernie is tipsy, and Elton is drunk, and being drunk makes him mean.

It’s a surprise, then, that Bernie looks unsettled.

“I’m trying,” he admits. Elton’s seen a few stanzas, scribbled over in black biro, discarded on the kitchen counter. Bernie never drafted his work in the old days; like Mozart, he wrote fully formed, start to finish without a single edit.

“You’re too happy,” Elton says, and his little slur makes him sound bitter.

“Not a struggling artist like you,” Bernie retorts, far fonder.

Elton leans back against the sloping earth, arching his arms behind his head. “The prime of my fucking life, Bernie,” he says magnanimously.

Bernie looks out at the vista. His stubble is overlong, too long unshaven, and the dying fire catches all the particulars of his homely face: thin lips, sharp chin, thick laughter lines around his mouth at even the wistful hint of a smile. Elton had felt drawn to him from the first second, fell in love with his words, and then his face, and then the rest of him. Even now - one divorce notched on Bernie’s belt and the ache of John’s fist still smarting Elton’s jaw - he could lean over and kiss Bernie.

As easy as drowning.

“C’mon,” Bernie announces, slapping Elton’s outstretched shin gently. “Bed. We’ll bang our heads together tomorrow, work something out.”

Elton hums, vague agreement. Takes another deep swallow of his drink.

Watches Bernie heave himself up from the ground. He’s unsteady and laughing about it, and stumbles a few steps, catching his balance on Elton’s shoulder. Elton clamps his hand suddenly on top of Bernie’s, not looking up at him. Holds him there for a moment too long. Then pats his warm skin and shoots him a smile, practised to perfection.

“Don’t wait up for me,” Elton says. Like they’re a long-married couple, used to turning in at ten thirty on the dot every night.

*

He—

*

Well, then.

*

If he’s brutally honest - and Elton is nothing if not abjectly brutal with himself - he doesn’t remember the particulars. He doesn’t really care to.

Certainly he’d taken his little snuffbox out of his dressing gown pocket and tapped a thick, raggedy line onto the porch banister. He snorted it badly, licked his finger to rub at the remnants and scrubbed coke and California dust on his molars, sniffing uncomfortably.

And then, very suddenly, he could see everything that Bernie loved about this place.

The risen moon seemed bright as daylight; the grass dewy and vivid green. The unfamiliar shrubbery lit up into little fireworks: purple, white, pink bursts that reminded him of strings of dolly beads from the sweet shop around the corner in Pinner. He felt like he could hear the low burring sleep-breath of the horses, tucked up in their quaint wooden barn; the soar of invisible eagles surfing the windless currents high above; and Bernie padding about behind him inside the ranch, turning on and off the taps, shifting back his blankets, yawns and murmurs, all intimately familiar sounds.

The close embrace of the foothills, not intimidating and impenetrable like mountains but warm and easy, coaxed him. A walk had seemed like a wonderful idea. Who wouldn’t want to go for a walk on a gorgeous night like this?

*

 _Christ,_  his jaw still hurts. Did he—has he picked the scab clean off?

No, no it’s still rough under his thumb; it’s not his jaw that smarts, it’s his foot, the sole of his left foot, and when he looks at it it’s bleeding, scratched up from pebbles and thorns, that’s why it hurts, that would be why—

*

He comes to on the porch.

It’s a strange return to consciousness, because he wasn’t asleep, hadn’t collapsed, nothing so dire. He just seemed to blink and then, with crystalline clarity, find himself standing motionless on the porch with a bloody foot and tree-branch gashes on the back of his hand. His dressing gown is open and the belt is nowhere to be seen. The insides of his thighs burn like they’re chafing.

How far did he walk?

It’s intolerably dark, and the grass is not emerald green. It’s as black as everything else is in the dead of fucking night.

There’s an echoing _tmp-tmp-tmp_ from inside the ranch that takes Elton a long moment to parse. The horses, he thinks, for a dreamy split-second; the horses are escaping.

*

He has seen Bernie sick with worry twice before in his life. The first time, it was hilarious: Bernie actually physically retching before their first ever TV interview, blaming it on nerves and a terrible kebab. The second time, Elton had just caught a glimpse of his stricken, drained face as they wheeled him away on a hospital gurney. Bernie had been trying to say something to him, ask him something, perhaps, but a paramedic was prattling in his ear about pumping his stomach, so Elton never heard what it was.

Here is the third.

*

He actually braces himself for a blow when Bernie marches out onto the porch towards him. A cowardly little cringe that Bernie ignores completely, striding up to him and pulling him into a fierce and painful hug.

“You fucking idiot,” he gasps against Elton’s neck. “I had no clue where you’d, Jesus, if you were even— you absolute fucking—”

There is still a faint dusting of coke on the porch banister, and Elton’s slippers, kicked off and left where they lay at the foot of the steps.

Bernie pushes Elton away and looks him up and down and all over, plucking stray pine needles out of his ratty hair, hissing in frustration over the scratches on his hands, swearing aloud when he sees Elton’s bare feet, dirty with blood and soil.

Immediately he tries to take Elton’s weight on his shoulder, wrangles him back inside the ranch, but Elton’s high is long worn down and he’s feeling crowded and indignant. It was just a hike. People must go hiking all the damn time in Santa bloody Barbara.

He bats Bernie away with an insistence that startles him.

“Please don’t fucking mother me, Bernie,” Elton spits.

“Someone should,” Bernie says, almost incredulous. “We both know yours never bothered.”

That draws Elton up short. Bernie’s expression is all soft regret; he’s a gentle lad and hates these petty barbs they trade when Elton’s angry and paranoid. The infamous come-down.

It makes him more stubborn than a kicked mule. “No,” he says sharply, “no, no, you don’t get to _pretend_. You don’t get to tell me you’re everything she wasn’t. You are not my blood, you are not my brother, and you are certainly not my _boyfriend_.” He gets some relish out of Bernie’s short, sudden inhale. “That’s always been made _perfectly_ clear.”

The silence between them is crackling and raw; static electricity with no outlet.

“I’m your friend,” Bernie says, very quietly.

“And what good is that supposed to do me?” Elton laughs.

The open hurt on Bernie’s face drains him of all his bitterness. He’s always been such a changeable cunt and at once he wants to kneel at Bernie’s feet, kiss his ankles, beg forgiveness.

He sways a little, then steadies his footing. Stands with his chest puffed out, an infantile display of superiority. It’s something he does to stage hands and pushy fans; not Bernie. Christ, he doesn’t need to do this to Bernie.

Bernie notes it. Nods; rubs the back of his neck uncomfortably.

“Listen,” he sighs. “I didn’t saying anything, but—Reid’s been calling. He wants you back on the road.”

Elton feels like all the bluster has been punched out of him.

Bernie shrugs, helpless but not apologetic. “You can go, if you want to. I won’t stop you.”

“I don’t—” Elton starts. His voice sounds boyish, pitiful. “I don’t _want_ to. But I’m meant to.”

“You’re the most famous man in the world,” Bernie says. It’s true, and he seems sad that it’s true. “You’re meant to do whatever you want.”

“I want to stay here with you.”

“So stay. Help me with the horses, smoke my bloody cigars, write some music with me. Just don’t beat yourself up for staying.”

He makes it sound ever so easy. Like how it used to be, when poems and rhythm flowed out of them both in perfect tandem. Back when Elton didn’t notice how much he yearned; it was simply his default state of existence. He didn’t know any better.

“I want—” he starts.

Bernie’s brow creases into the slightest frown, but he gives Elton space to finish.

“I always wanted—” Elton tries again.

He can’t fucking say it.

He used to be so shy. Everybody knew it. An insular little boy who dressed himself up like a rock’n’roller and played the piano too loud to make up for being so quiet. He was shy even when he first met Bernie, embarrassed by his zeal for Bernie’s genius, ashamed of how desperately he wanted to be liked; more than liked.

Nobody calls him _shy_ anymore.

Haltingly, he lets his feet pull him in a step closer. Lets Bernie’s gravity make his chest and neck heavy, hard to hold upright. He’s staring at Bernie’s mouth, and gets as close as he once did all those years ago - the grimy rooftop of the commune, his silk scarf ticklish around his neck, and Bernie’s split-second of wide-eyed displeasure - and then he stops.

Waits.

(This is a mistake.)

Waits for Bernie’s soft rebuff.

But instead—

Instead, Bernie very gently puts his palms on Elton’s wrists. Not quite pulling him close, but something coaxing in his fingertips. His neck is stiff, his body braced, but his gaze is steady, reassuring, a warm refrain: _it’s all right, it’s all right._

The kiss, when it comes, is so chaste it’s agonising. It’s like Elton noticing his own breath, becoming pointedly aware of something that should feel so natural it’s mindless. He hasn’t kissed like this since he was barely out of his teens. John doesn’t have time, these days, for trite displays of affection.

Bernie needs a shave. They both do. Lax and lazy.

The moment he feels Bernie begin to pull back, Elton panics. Grabs at his forearms to stop him slipping away.

“Okay?” Bernie murmurs, knocking his forehead softly against Elton’s.

“Can I—?”

“Whatever you need,” Bernie says.

He needs to kiss Bernie again.

It’s deeper this time. Not entirely like John kisses him - he likes to hold Elton’s jaw still and possess his mouth, likes to knead the meat of Elton’s ass and tell him how good he is for this - but he does run his tongue along Bernie’s thin bottom lip, begging. Bernie’s discomfort is awfully palpable, his whole body tense, but he opens his mouth for it on a sigh, meets Elton’s wet desperation with some kind of willingness, even if it’s nothing eager.

Elton kisses him until he can’t breathe. He knows once they stop, it will be over.

It has to be, eventually, over.

He leans his head on Bernie’s chest, almost gasping for air. He cannot bear to look in Bernie’s eyes and see what he always sees there - fondness, of course, but a neutrality that burns him like a brand.

“We don’t need to do anything more than this,” he starts babbling, rubbing his hair against the underside of Bernie’s chin like a hungry cat. “We never did, I’d never ask that of you, I just—I just want it to be _us_ , me and you, just, let me kiss you sometimes and that would be enough, Bernie, I swear—”

“It is just us,” Bernie says sadly. “It was.”

“It was, it _was_ , let’s go back to how it was, huh, Bernie? This is all I need—” and he kisses Bernie like a punctuation mark, forceful and pointed, and feels Bernie actively pull away from his mouth for the first time that night. “That’s okay, right? That’ll be okay?”

“Reggie.” Bernie’s voice is both very, very soft and very, very stern. It makes Elton feel safe, even as Bernie chides him: protected from himself. “Reggie, you’re high.”

“I’m not, I promise, not now,” Elton mumbles. “I can just see it all so clearly.”

“I’m going to get you a glass of water,” Bernie says, easing Elton upright, “and I’m going to take you to bed, okay?”

“Okay,” Elton says miserably.

The few steps to the bedroom wear him out. It’s difficult to put weight on his scratched foot. He’s docile and exhausted as Bernie shrugs his dressing gown off his shoulders, rolls down his briefs and helps him, naked, into his bed. The backs of his knees are thick-wet with sweat, and he throws his legs out from under the sheets immediately. “All right,” Bernie chuckles, low, and arranges Elton’s arms on top of the bed-sheet, tucks the rest of it between his spread legs so only his chest and his modesty are covered.

Elton could sleep for a hundred years.

“G’night, mate,” Bernie murmurs, very close to his ear.

“I thought you were my mother,” Elton mutters, childish again. “Where’s my kiss goodnight?”

He regrets it the instant Bernie hesitates. But then Bernie leans back down, presses his mouth to Elton’s forehead.

He can’t—

He can’t help but grab for Bernie’s jaw. Pull his mouth lower into the kind of frantic kiss that knows it’s a dying breed. Bernie hushes him. He has the good grace not to jerk back, just puts his hands firmly on Elton’s shoulders and presses him back into the pillow, an arm’s length between them.

“Get some sleep, Reg,” he says.

“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry nothing. I said get some sleep.”

*

Elton does sleep. It’s always hit or miss whether he’ll be struck dumb or simply lay awake for hours at a time. Entirely dreamless; almost boneless.

*

He hasn’t worn half the shit he brought out with him. Ridiculous.

*

He hasn’t worn half the shit he brought out with him, and he won’t, because when John calls the next day, Elton picks up the phone.

“So how many hits did you boys manage to write, hmm?” John asks, smug.

A car rolls up the long driveway within three hours.

*

This is a mistake.

But when he makes this many, who the fuck is counting?


End file.
